


A Walk In The Woods - Test

by sorenwrites



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Hetalia, TW TERMINAL ILLNESS, aph, idk if you don't like dead people skip some stuff, tw cancer, tw dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 23:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16820392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorenwrites/pseuds/sorenwrites
Summary: The first chapter of A Walk In The Woods. Please tell me what you think of it so that I know whether or not it is worth continuing.After Tino is diagnosed with brain cancer, he dies. He wakes up shortly afterward, and sets off to find the truth–the truth of what he truly was.





	1. How He Died - Chapter One

It seemed like no surprise at all to Berwald that Tino was sick. All of his headaches, his lack of sleep, his mood swings, his vomiting. It all became known when Berwald called an ambulance after a seizure. Tino had been diagnosed with a brain tumor–the kind that you don’t recover from.  
Tino spent a lot of time alone after that. Berwald suspected that Tino was terrified by his fate, and did not blame him. After all, what was Tino? He was a queer twenty-something. A calamity was bound to happen, one way or another. Berwald understood that Tino hadn’t expected to live past thirty for a long time.  
It still somehow snuck up on him. Berwald spent a lot of sleepless nights mulling over what he would do when Tino was gone. They had recently spoken about getting married, before Tino had been diagnosed. Berwald couldn’t imagine letting Tino go, not after everything that had happened, yet Tino just kept watching the snow drift lazily out the window.  
His last few months were not happy ones. Berwald suggested that they travelled away from the cold for a week, but Tino just wanted to keep working, to pretend like it wouldn’t happen. Tino never had that chance. He was bedridden after every surgery, and after that occasionally because of chemo. He went out rarely, and officially was on leave from work. Matthias dropped by a few times, but his visits soon became a rarity. Tino expressed regret at this.  
One day, while Berwald was sitting at the edge of his bed with a book, Tino said, “Why aren’t you with friends?”  
Berwald looked up from his reading, and said, “You would be alone. I don’t want you to be alone. Besides, it’s not fun for me to watch Matthias get drunk.”  
Tino quieted again, and turned his head away from Berwald to watch the dark night through the window. “I think you would benefit from their company.”  
“I think you would benefit from mine.”  
Although he could not see Tino’s face, Berwald sensed that Tino was smiling.

It wasn’t long before Tino’s body began to deteriorate. It was longer than the doctors had said, but just like the diagnosis, Berwald hadn’t fully realized what was happening. The winter had passed on to spring, and the snow melted. Snow had always been Tino’s favorite.  
Tino’s cousin came in April. She stayed for a few days, and hardly left Tino’s side. They talked all day in a hushed language, Tino’s weak voice a reminder of his mortality. It seemed like Tino was as fragile as glass at that point.  
Eventually, Tino’s memory faltered, and at its worst he began forgetting English words. His vocabulary was marbled with Finnish.  
He was hospitalized a few weeks after Midsummer. His father flew out to spend a few months at Tino’s bedside. His mother couldn’t be bothered. Tino didn’t speak much after his father’s arrival. Berwald suspected Tino was unhappy that, despite their numerous and serious disagreements, his mother never said goodbye.  
The funeral was quick. It was in a stuffy church just outside of the city, in a green, leafy suburb. The bright stained glass mocked Berwald’s pain. Distraught Matthias offered his condolences, and stoic Lukas hugged Berwald tightly, whispering his apologies through tears. Tino never said anything, he just lay silently in his wooden coffin. Berwald had to fight the urge to turn and confide in his old friend.  
He kept expecting Tino’s eyes to flutter open, and for everything in the last eight-and-a-half months to be just a dream. A stupid, anxious little dream.  
But that never did happen, and the service was over. A million hands touched his arms, his shoulders, his hands, attempting to comfort him. His parents, Tino’s father, Tino’s friends, Berwald’s friends. Tino’s cousins even braved the English language to speak with Berwald about their loss.  
He returned home early, unable to stay in a room filled to the brim with death. He dreaded going back there for the burial. He had scheduled the burial for the day after the funeral. Berwald knew prior to Tino’s death that he could not bear to see Tino’s body in a coffin in a church the same day he saw that same coffin six feet in the ground. Matthias tried to persuade him to reconsider, but Berwald was firm with his decision.  
Matthias accompanied him home, a hand resting on Berwald’s shoulder as they walked the few unfamiliar blocks between the train station and the church, and then the train station and Berwald’s apartment. The now-cluttered space was a constant reminder of Tino’s death, and Berwald spent the better part of the evening crying into Matthias’s shoulder. Lukas dropped by with lasagne later on. They spent dinner sitting at a cramped table under a dim light, silent, Berwald still teary-eyed.


	2. Reawakening - Chapter Two

The pain of new life in an old body seeped into Tino. First a groan escaped his mouth, echoing in the cavernous church, then his mind whirred to life inside him. A million thoughts bombarded his brain instantly, no longer slowed by his condition.  
He sat up, shaking the flowers from his stiff black suit, and shakily climbed from his coffin onto the white table, then onto the ground. He felt his skin begin to revitalize itself, and his hair began to grow back to its original length. It was as if someone had hit the rewind button on his body.  
Tino quickly found a bathroom in the church basement, and removed his makeup and wig. He gazed into the mirror for a moment, knowing he was looking into the eyes of a dead man.  
Upstairs, he found the doors locked. He threw his body at them, but they refused to yield an exit from the church. He decided to get creative with his solutions, and climbed out of a basement window, landing in a dark, dirty, wet alleyway. Tino found his way to the front of the church, and immediately recognized his surroundings. He had come here in the past with Berwald when Berwald joined a few years prior.  
The walk would be long and far, and his shoes weren’t comfortable in the least. The shock of his situation had not yet set in. The breezy, warm August night filled his lungs with pleasure. He had forgotten the joy of a walk in the dark.  
Gazing at his semi-withered skin healing itself between street lights, Tino began asking himself why he was alive. He began to suspect that he was something like a ghost, or a zombie. Perhaps he had a set time to roam, and after that he would become accepted into the afterlife, just like he’d read in his Chinese textbooks. Maybe the past year had been an elaborate prank, and at any moment his friends would pop out from behind a bush. In that moment, his greatest desire was to go to a bar and drink with Matthias like they always had.  
By the time he reached a row of storefronts, Tino realized that he had almost completely healed. His skin was pale, but not out of the ordinary. His dull blond hair somewhat resembled what it had been before it had been shaved for surgery and chemotherapy. For the first time in a long time he felt normal.

His feet hurt enormously by the time he arrived home–or they ought to have. Tino suspected many things were upset when he awoke, his nerves chief among them. He stopped in the street, unsure of how to approach Berwald. After all, Berwald had just witnessed him die and, by judging his formal attire, attended his funeral. There was no way Tino could just walk in there.  
He paused in the dark street. The trees above his head rustled as midnight approached, the breeze brushing gently against his face. Despite the warmth in the air, Tino shivered.  
There was a yellow light shining from one window in particular–his own. It came from the living room, which opened to the street and had a balcony with a few chairs. Tino gazed at the edges of a tall figure, and assumed the figure to be none other than Lukas Bondevik.  
He watched for a half hour, standing idly in the center of the road, waiting. He wanted Berwald to see him one last time. His wish was finally granted when a shadow shifted over the visible wall, and a tall figure with round wire glasses stopped in the window, looking out the window. Tino could see the dim illumination of Berwald’s eyes. After a moment of holding eye contact, Tino turned to walk away, an unhappy feeling rising in his throat.  
That’s when he realized he could not go back.  
Humans are fooled when they say that in the afterlife feelings remain the same. The truth is, the only sensation a spirit truly experiences is bitter cold. The freeze of a thousand winters, the rushing stream of the Alaskan wilderness. The feeling of falling through ice into unforgiving waters. Blood pools in the legs, the fingers, the feet–but it is of no use. It is already as frigid as the outside air seems to a body without heat.  
It came as a shock to Tino when he finally realized that he did not experience emotions at all, and had acted based on feelings he’d held in life, and not in death. He could not decide whether it was freeing or worrying.  
Tino wanted to continue watching, anxious to see whether Berwald had recognized him. It was merely wishful thinking, believing that Berwald would chase down someone who resembled a dead friend. He might have been hurt by Berwald’s reluctance to recognize him in his past life, but as with most emotions, the pain was hardly there at all. Tino came to understand that his leftover emotion was the product of twenty-five some years of having the privilege of feeling.  
Nevertheless, the illusion of disappointment washed over him like the light from the dim streetlamp above his head.


End file.
